


i feel like a mile high pastrami on rye on the fly from the deli in the sky

by SallyLovette



Category: Madagascar (Movies)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:28:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27322747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SallyLovette/pseuds/SallyLovette
Summary: Zuba tries to make his son more like him.Or,What happened after the penguins left?
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> If your plan is to ask me why I'm writing Madagascar fanfiction in 2020 while a list of Important Stuff to Do for College is sitting on my nightstand waiting to be addressed and depression continues to kick my ass as hard as it can (and that's before even mentioning my other fanfiction that needs finishing) then you should know I could rack my brain for days and still not come up with a satisfying answer

Ever since getting shot in the ass with a tranq dart in Grand Central Station, Alex has been having a bad time.

Even miraculously reuniting with his parents after being ripped away from them at what might as well have been birth stopped being fun after his dad turned out to be a die-hard conservative and traditionalist, which sucked extra-hard because Africa (or their little piece of it, at least) had a lot of very sacred traditions and apparently one of the most important ones involved ritualistic killing. 

Or, as Zuba called it, “hunting.”

Alex was a dancer, had always been a dancer. He had about as much interest in hunting as he did in throwing himself into the nearest volcano.

His father didn’t want to hear it.

One of the first times they’d discussed it (if Zuba talking and Alex scarcely managing to conceal his horror could be called a discussion), Zuba had gone off on this whole shtick about “the circle of life” that just got more horrifying the longer it went on even though it was clearly intended to have the opposite effect. He’d never flat-out _said_ “no son of mine is a pescatarian,” but the look on his face had said everything. It was bad enough that Alex’s best friend was a zebra. That he didn't eat zebra at all, ever, was unacceptable. 

The rest of the pride thought it too: a lion that didn't hunt wasn't a lion at all. 

It wasn't really that big of a deal. Alex had long since given up trying to fit in around here. There was just no way. No plumbing, no dancing, no volumizing hair conditioner, no New York Knicks—who in their right mind would even _want_ to fit into a place like this? It wasn't that much different from Madagascar, and he and his friends had struggled to escape from that nightmare for well over a year before succeeding. This was just Madagascar Two: Electric Boogaloo.

Actually, now that he thought of it, this was worse. So much worse. Because Madagascar was just as rustic as here, but now on top of that he had to deal with the crushing weight of his father's disappointment every minute of every day. 

And what was even worse than that was his father's struggle not to show it. Florrie had clearly talked to him about how lucky they were to have their long-lost son back in their lives and that he should do his best to be accepting, and damned if he wasn't trying. Alex could tell, and he appreciated it, he really did. But seeing him smile, even forcedly, was sometimes worse than seeing him yell 

(emphasis on sometimes)

because it made him want to do everything in his power to make him happy. But making Zuba happy would require learning how to use his teeth and claws for bloodshed and that was just out of the question. It wasn’t even worth thinking about.

If only he didn't _want_ to make Zuba proud of him, then things would be much easier. If only he could have all the good parts of reuniting with his family and none of the bad, then he would be happy. But as much as his parents loved him and as much as he loved them, they were from two different worlds and there was no fixing that.

He kept his mouth shut about what he’d almost done to Marty their first night on that stupid island. If his dad knew he lost all control the second he got a little peckish, he could, if he wanted, use that information to his advantage. Not that Alex thought he would. But it was better to play it safe. And he didn’t like talking about it anyway.


	2. Chapter 2

“You’re so slow,” scoffed Mfalme. With the possible exception of his father, Alex had never seen anyone look so irritated.

It was especially exasperating because he was doing his best. His lungs were burning, his heart was hammering, and his muscles felt like lead. He’d been running all morning. Mfalme, who was the best hunter in the pride, was supposed to be helping him get better at it, but no matter what they tried, he just wasn’t making progress.

Alex knew it was his own fault. His heart just wasn’t in it. He wasn’t doing this because he wanted to; he was doing it to make his dad happy.

He slowed down even though he knew Mfalme would yell at him for it. “I can’t,” he gasped. “I can’t, I can’t run anymore.”

Mfalme jumped on him, knocking him onto his back with a painful _thud_. Alex breathed in dry, hot dust; razor-sharp teeth bared themselves a millimeter in front of his face. “You suck at this.”

“Pretty much.” His lungs were still catching up; he couldn’t draw enough breath to say anything else, even though Mfalme was waiting impatiently. The weight of another full-grown lion on his chest wasn’t helping. Every gasp was painful and his ribs ached, but even if he’d had the strength, he wouldn’t have dared try to break free.

Mfalme must have felt bad for him, or maybe she just remembered that if he died Zuba would banish her, because she finally let him up. While he struggled to catch his breath, she paced around, looking distinctly displeased.

“I don’t think this is working out,” Alex wheezed after a while, breaking the silence between them. “I’m just not good at it.”

“You can’t give up.” Mfalme returned to his side, looking uncharacteristically sympathetic. He had expected her to start yelling at him— “toughen up,” “stop being such a baby,” etc. Instead, her expression was calm and understanding. “What about your dad?”

Alex didn’t have an answer to that. He didn’t want to disappoint Zuba, but he didn’t know how to make him happy. It was a dilemma.

A brief silence ensued. Then Mfalme jumped on him, almost knocking him over again. He stumbled precariously and, with all the strength in his poor, aching body, just managed to remain upright. “Don’t.” He pushed her off.

“Let’s fight.”

“I can’t.”

“Come on.”

Every time Alex pushed her off, she jumped on him again. His protests went ignored. He tried several times to run away, but he was too exhausted and she was too fast, and he could never get more than a few steps away before being tackled. Soon his ears, nose, and mane were full of dust.

He hated dust. He suspected there were bugs in it. And there were no luxury baths here, not like at the zoo, where he had soap and shampoo and conditioner and all the hot running water he could ask for. Here, he was expected to clean himself with—ugh—his tongue!

Mfalme continued to wrestle with him, oblivious to his inner turmoil. It was obvious what she was doing. She was trying to force him to get stronger.

He hated when she did that.

A week ago, she’d taught him to swim. They’d gone to a cliff far, far from the watering hole. He’d gotten distracted admiring the horizon. Then she’d shoved him into the river below without warning. In response to desperate his cries for help, she’d advised him to keep his head above the water and kick his legs.

The old sink-or-swim method. He’d narrowly survived. Later, when he’d confronted her—dripping wet and trembling from tip to tail, his muscles pushed to their absolute limits—she had stood her ground with perfect composure. “It worked, didn’t it?” she’d said.

“That’s not the point.”

“No?”

“I could’ve _drowned.”_

“But you didn’t.”

He’d been speechless. The only reason he’d gone with her that day was because Zuba had pressured him to. Mfalme, he’d said, had a lot to teach him. If he stuck with her, he’d soon be as accustomed to the ways of the pride as if he’d been a part of it all his life.

After the river incident, Alex had informed Zuba that he would not be spending time with Mfalme in the future.

Zuba had laughed. “So you learned to swim today, huh?”

Alex had been so taken aback he’d forgotten how furious he was. He’d expected his father to be indignant on his behalf. He now realized he’d been an idiot to do so. “She almost killed me.”

“Oh, son, don’t be so dramatic.”

“You don’t think that was a little extreme?” Alex had bitten back what he’d really wanted to say: that everyone here—perhaps his father most of all—was completely insane.

“You’re alright, aren’t you? You didn’t get hurt?”

“I’m fine,” Alex had conceded, then sneezed three times in a row. “Well, I might be coming down with something, but—”

“Mfalme would never put you in danger. You know why?” Zuba had thrown his arm around Alex, his grip strong, yet reassuring. It seemed to say, _I’ll always protect you, my son._ Alex suddenly felt a lot better. “Because if she did, I’d banish her.”

“Really?” Alex had managed between sneezes, wishing there was a pharmacy nearby. Some Nyquil would be amazing right about now.

“You know, you and Mfalme were like two peas in a pod when you were younger,” said Zuba, giving Alex’s shoulder another bone-crushing-but-somehow-still-comforting squeeze. “Although I don’t suppose you remember that.”

Alex didn’t. He didn’t remember much of this place at all—just tiny snippets. But after a few days, and after Melman had given him a prescription, and after his dad had talked to him a little more—despite his reservations, and despite being suspicious that his dad was exaggerating if not flat-out lying about him and Mfalme being childhood friends—he’d finally agreed to give her another chance.

Now he was starting to regret it.

He saw her claws before he felt them. He gasped and fell backwards; she immediately retreated. The words “I’m sorry” seemed to be on the tip of her tongue, but she didn’t say them.

Alex felt his cheek, then looked down and saw blood. He felt dizzy.

“It’s just a scratch,” said Mfalme quickly. Alex had never seen her look uncertain before. A drop of blood fell off his face and landed in the dust. It occurred to him that he’d never bled before, ever, for any reason. “I’m going to faint,” he said in a high-pitched voice.

“No, you’re not,” Mfalme said. She ended up being right, but they still walked home in total silence, Alex swearing to himself that he would never trust her again, no matter how much his father insisted. 


	3. Chapter 3

Alex was regretting his choices. Through an extremely unlikely series of events (tortoise, bushfire), he’d managed to give Mfalme the slip, only to end up in the middle of nowhere. It was someplace he had never been, intensely hot and dry, with no shade or vegetation of any kind.

He was exhausted. After a full morning of running, he’d used up all the energy he’d had left just to get away from Mfalme. As soon as she’d gotten distracted, he’d run, as far and as long as he possibly could, without even looking where he was going.

On the up side, he was certain she didn’t know where he was.

On the down side, he had no idea where he was, either.

As worried as he was about that, his biggest concern was his face. He really, really hoped he wasn’t going to have a scar. He would sell his soul not to end up with a scar. He didn’t even want to think about what a scar would do to his career.

He could’ve gone to the watering hole to look at his reflection (high on the list of things he missed from civilization was a decent mirror) and gauge the damage, but he didn’t feel like running into his parents just then.

He could’ve gone to see Marty—Marty, his one-in-a-million friend, the best zebra in the world, who would have known just what to say to make him feel better—but wherever Marty was was the first place Mfalme (or his parents) would look for him.

He couldn’t take another step. He flopped onto his back, not caring for the moment how lost he was, and stared at the sky.

Not a breeze stirred the air. His cheek stung and he missed his friends. His father pressuring him to spend all his time training meant that he didn’t get to see them as often. He wanted nothing more than to talk to them, to explain his feelings and seek their advice, but going home meant having to face his parents sooner or later, and he wasn’t in the mood for that right now.

It wasn’t that he didn’t love his parents, or that they didn’t love him. He just didn’t really feel like being reminded how inadequate he was for the millionth time.

The sky was blue and cloudless. It was always that way. He wished for a storm, or a drop of rain, or even a cloud. Just a small one. But, of course, the odds of that were about as good as the odds that he would see Manhattan anytime soon.

He closed his eyes.

If, a month ago, someone had told him that he would miss being stuck in Madagascar, he would have died laughing. Snakes, spiders, baobabs, a society of deranged lemurs led by an insane monarch, and nothing to drink but seawater and coconut milk? Come on.

But now, remembering how he used to nap in the shade for entire afternoons whenever he felt like it, and subsist more than happily on penguin-caught fish in lieu of steak without anyone thinking he was weird (let alone trying to stop him), and not be burdened by the crushing weight of someone else’s wants and expectations, he felt more like crying.

Compared to New York, Madagascar had been hell. Compared to Africa, Madagascar was heaven. He supposed that made New York some kind of ultra-mega-super-heaven, inconceivable to him in his current state, covered in dust from head to toe, arms and legs like jelly, whiskers sticky with half-dried blood.

All he wanted was to go home. Was that really so much to ask? He ached to be back where he belonged, to fall asleep to the noise of traffic and wake up to the clanging of bells, to feel concrete under his feet instead of sand, to be showered with the love and adulation of his fans…

To abandon his parents. His mother and father, the two people who meant more to him than anyone else in the world, the long-lost family he never dreamed he’d reunite with, not even in a million years.

Was it selfish to want to leave them? To want to break their hearts for the second time in ten years, this time voluntarily? But he hated it here. Every moment was miserable. They didn’t want that for him, did they?

They couldn’t really expect him to stay here forever, could they? They’d never discussed it. Alex wouldn’t have known where to start and now that he thought of it he suspected they didn’t either.

Not that it mattered unless—until—the penguins came back. It had been two months since they’d left (he’d been keeping track), but it felt more like two years. Meanwhile, his beloved New York was as far away as ever.

Gradually, his breathing and heartrate slowed to normal, and he stood up. He struggled to remember which way was home. It was hard to think when he was dying of dehydration.

He scanned his surroundings. To his surprise, he wasn’t alone after all. A big black bird was sitting on a rock not far away.

He was so relieved that he didn’t even question how long it had been watching him.

“Hi,” he said, approaching it. “Hi, there. Sorry to bother you, but I’m kind of lost. D’you think you could point me back towards the watering hole?”

The bird didn’t reply. Alex wondered if it had heard him. Then it pointed out into the desert with a big black wing.

”Thank you,” Alex said gratefully. “Thank you so much.”

He set out. Hours later, he was still walking. Had he really ventured out this far? It hadn’t occurred to him to ask how long it would take to get there.

The sun was setting and there was still no water in sight. Up until now, his gaze had been focused exclusively on the dry, cracked ground, but for some reason, despite his exhaustion, he felt the impulse to look up.

There were more birds now, circling him, five or six of them at least. He realized they were vultures. A shiver went down his spine despite the extreme heat. Why were they following him? 

Had they given him bad directions on purpose?

No, he decided almost immediately, they wouldn’t have done that. Why would they? It wasn’t like he was dying. He was just lost.

They were probably just keeping an eye on him to make sure he arrived safely. Nearly everyone he had ever met in Africa seemed to have been ordered by his father to keep him safe, under threat of banishment.

That was probably it.


	4. Chapter 4

After a certain point, Alex’s memories became hazy. He remembered getting lost, and wandering for hours, and watching the sky fade from blue to pink to black. He didn’t remember the exact moment he collapsed from exhaustion, but he assumed it must have happened, because the next thing he knew he was lying face-up on the ground with the sun shining down on him at full blast.

Something jabbed his side painfully. He didn’t open his eyes; it was too bright. The thing jabbed him again, harder this time. Without meaning to, he growled, a low, menacing sound from deep within his throat. When the whatever-it-was jabbed him a third time, his instincts took over, and he sprang to all fours, snarling viciously, claws extended, ready to pounce.

The vultures scattered.

His adrenaline flagging, Alex stumbled. His hunger, though dreadful, was nothing compared to his thirst. If he didn’t get water soon, he would die.

Unfortunately, there was nothing but desert in sight.

The vultures regrouped not far away. Alex glared at them. “Would you quit following me?” His voice was no better than a rasp. He added, “And you _did_ give me bad directions on purpose!”

They didn’t say anything. Alex felt the urge to lunge at them, to bat them around a little, wipe those creepy looks off their faces. He scarcely restrained himself.

His walking pace was much slower than yesterday. Many times, he thought, _I can’t go any further._ But the vultures were still following him, and he had no choice.

*  
  


“I want you to stay with Mfalme,” his father had said. “She’ll make sure you’re safe.”

“What, like a babysitter?”

“Think of her more like protection.”

“Like a bodyguard?” Alex had been joking, but the look on his father’s face told him he’d hit the nail on the head. “Really?” he’d said dubiously. “What do I need a bodyguard for?”

“You never know.”

“But it’s safe on the reserve, right?”

“The safest place on the continent is wherever Mfalme is, and when I’m not around that’s where I want you to be. You don’t expect me to keep my eye on you every minute of every day, now, do you?”

Before Alex could ask why anyone needed to keep an eye on him, a fully-grown lion, at all, Zuba had pressed, “you do get along, don’t you?”

“Who, me and—?” Alex had shrugged. “Sure, I guess. I just—”

“Because I think you’d really hit it off if you just—”

“Okay, okay.” Alex had cut him off, eager to change the subject. The last thing he needed was another thing for his father to pressure him about. “I mean, thank you. Thank you for trying to keep me safe. Really. I just—”

“I just want what’s best for you,” his father had said. “You know that, right?”

“Of course,” Alex had reassured him quickly.

“All those years I was never around to protect you.” Zuba wasn’t even looking at Alex anymore, as if he was talking to himself instead of him. “You know, a father should be able to protect his son. And after what happened to you, I—I mean, how could I forgive myself if I made the same mistake again?”

“Dad—”

“I owe this to you, son. More than I owe it to your mother, or to myself for that matter.”

“Dad—”

“You can’t imagine what we went through when we lost you.”

“Dad,” Alex had said, ignoring the sting of yet another painful reminder that his father considered him as frail and vulnerable as a cub, “it’s okay. It wasn’t your fault.

But his father acted as if he hadn't heard him.

*  
  


Alex didn’t know how many hours passed before a dark smudge—like a forest, or maybe a mountain range—appeared on the horizon.

By this time, his thirst, for some strange reason, felt less severe; his hunger, which had been clawing at his insides since the day before, was gone. His headache had vanished and his limbs were no longer made of lead.

His vision blurred. He squinted at the smudge, trying to see it more clearly. _It's the reserve,_ he realized, his heart leaping with joy. _I made it! I’m finally back!_

He didn’t feel tired at all. He felt strangely light, almost happy.

The planet tilted. He thought, _huh, that’s weird_. His body hit the ground with a painful thud.

In his last moments of consciousness, he discerned, in the distance, someone walking towards him—a tiny silhouette, maybe human, maybe animal, too far away to tell.

“Marty?” he said. Then everything went dark.


End file.
